14 January 2014

The Silk Route expedition traverses 1,500 kilometres in Uzbekistan, taking in its varied landscape, meeting its vibrant people and absorbing its colourful culture and chequered history. Text & photographs by SUDHA MAHALINGAM

AFTER the severe steppes of Kazakhstan and the stark mountains of the Kyrgyz Republic, the India-Central Asia Foundation (ICAF) expedition through Central Asia entered Uzbekistan on the last leg of its journey. This republic came across as a stark contrast to the lands we had crossed so far, not only for its varied landscape, vibrant people, colourful culture and chequered history but also for the thoroughness of the Uzbek immigration and customs officials at the land border. Our luggage was rummaged through meticulously, even our laptops were opened and files scrutinised. The procedure took a long time, but all the while we were entertained by the immigration officials who spotted resemblances to Bollywood stars in the facial features of the three young women in our team.

Professor P.L. Dash of Bombay University, who is currently the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) India Chair at the University of World Economy and Diplomacy in Tashkent, the Uzkek capital, had come all the way to the border to receive and accompany the delegation. A new set of vehicles had been arranged to take the team through the next 1,500 kilometres of Uzbek territory. The Cyrillic script gives way to Latin and the Russian language makes way for Uzbek. Yet, all the towns of the Ferghana Valley—Andijon, Ferghana, Rishton, Namangan, Kokand—still bear the unmistakable imprint of Soviet influence, with their broad, tree-lined avenues and clean streets.

The government-to-government weapon contracts between the U.S. and India, with no competitive bidding or transparency, are deepening India’s import dependency without arming it with a decisive edge.

The blossoming of ties with the United States has become an important diplomatic asset for India in recent years. Yet, the heady glow of the much-ballyhooed strategic partnership helped obscure prickly issues that arose much before the Devyani Khobragade episode. In truth, the Obama administration’s reluctance to accommodate Indian interests on major issues, coupled with the fundamental challenge of managing an asymmetrical relationship, has created fault lines that are testing the resilience of the partnership.

One aspect of the relationship, however, has thrived spectacularly — U.S. arms sales to India. In just a few years, the U.S. has quietly emerged as India’s largest arms supplier, leaving Russia and Israel far behind. This development is linked to the Indo-U.S. civilian nuclear deal. Although it remains a dud deal on energy, with little prospect of delivering a single operational nuclear power plant for years to come, it has proved a roaring success in opening the door to major U.S. arms sales. The 2005 nuclear agreement-in-principle incorporated a specific commitment to ramp up defence transactions.

The booming arms sales — rising in barely one decade from a measly $100 million to billions of dollars yearly — have seemingly acquired an independent momentum. Nothing better illustrates this than the fact that, at the height of the Khobragade affair, India, far from seeking to impose any costs on America, awarded it yet another mega-contract — a $1.01-billion deal for supply of six additional C-130J military transport aircraft. When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited the White House last September, among the gifts he took for President Barack Obama was a commitment to purchase $5 billion worth of new arms.

Today, India’s largely one-sided defence relationship with the U.S. is beginning to look akin to its lopsided ties with Russia, with weapon sales serving as the driving force. However, unlike the torpid Indo-Russian non-military commerce, the two-way Indo-U.S. trade has quadrupled in just seven years from $25 billion in 2006 to about $100 billion in 2013.

For America’s intelligence and diplomatic apparatus to work, it needs to be able to do secret things whose disclosure would be damaging to American interests. And it needs to be able to bind government employees and contractors to not to make those disclosures. Snowden broke his commitment to safeguard a wide variety of secrets, many of whose disclosure was in no apparent public interest.

Mr Snowden has done some good. He has highlighted the NSA’s sloppy security procedures and the danger of “contractorisation”. He has stoked a necessary debate about the nature of meta-data and has shown that using legal means to arm-twist American internet and technology companies into cooperating with the NSA can backfire.

But these benefits are far outweighed by the harm. Here are a few examples of such disclosures:

how the NSA intercepts e-mails, phone calls and radio transmissions of Taliban fighters in Pakistan; an operation to gauge the loyalties of CIA recruits in Pakistan;

To the South China Morning Post Snowden revealed details of how the NSA hacks into computers and mobile phones in China and Hong Kong.

Indeed, many of the disclosures seem directly aimed at damaging American diplomacy, or harming American allies. One bunch of leaks concerned Swedish intelligence co-operation with America against Russia. Another concerned similar operations involving Norway. Nobody has explained the public interest in revealing how democracies spy on dictatorships. The answer—as far as can be discerned from Glenn Greenwald, the American lawyer in Brazil who is the custodian of at least some of the cache of stolen material, and the most articulate public defender of their release—is that it is inherently shameful and scandalous for any country to have security, defence or intelligence links with Britain and America.

The company has been active here since 2005 when it signed a multi-billion pound deal to provide networking equipment to BT. It has been embraced by David Cameron and George Osborne as a major investor in Britain.

Mr Osborne was even pictured laughing and joking with founder Ren Zhengfei on a trade visit to China last year. But ­intelligence chiefs have been more wary of the company and its plans to spend £1.3billion growing its UK operations.

The Sunday Mirror understands the Ministry of Justice first bought video conferencing equipment from Huawei in the autumn of 2011 to link up top level meetings around the country.

Al-Qaeda has staged a remarkable comeback in Iraq in the last year. Former National Security Advisor Jim Jones has called it “al-Qaeda’s renaissance.” This year, most if not all American forces and those of our allies in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) will finally come home from Afghanistan. Will al-Qaeda have another renaissance in South Asia?

There was no al-Qaeda in Iraq before 9/11—the terror organization moved into Iraq only when Osama bin Laden saw George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were getting ready to invade Iraq in 2003. He set a trap. By 2006 Al-Qaeda in Iraq had plunged the country into civil war, pitting Shia against Sunni. Only the brave efforts of American Marines and GIs prevented the complete collapse of the state. Now al-Qaeda has come back in Iraq, raising its black flag over territory once fought over so hard by Americans.

As al Qaeda-related forces take over cities in western Iraq, global news outlets discuss the implications of brewing unrest and a potential civil war.

Can the same tragedy be repeated in Afghanistan and Pakistan? The longest war in American history will largely end for Americans this year. It will not end for Afghans or Pakistanis. Pakistan will continue to be the principal supporter and patron of the Afghan Taliban, the enemy that we have been fighting for so long. Pakistan provides the Taliban with safe haven and sanctuary to train and recruit its fighters and protects its leaders, including Mullah Omar. The Pakistani intelligence service, ISI, helps train and fund the Taliban.

Al-Qaeda may well recover in months, not years, after we depart Afghanistan if the pressure on its base in Pakistan dwindles.

For the last few years America has also fought a second war from Afghanistan, the counter-terrorist war inside Pakistan. Al-Qaeda found a new base in Pakistan after we toppled Mullah Omar’s Afghan emirate in 2001. The highlight of this second covert war was the SEAL raid to kill Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. More frequent have been drone missions to disrupt al-Qaeda operations in Pakistan: By one count, 340 lethal missions since President Obama took office, and more than two dozen just last year.

On 10 January, Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade, till recently the deputy consul general in New York returned to Delhi after being criminally indicted by a US court in a high-octane, hyper-visible visa fraud case related to her domestic maid that saw India-US relations reaching a new low. The Indian government had arranged for full diplomatic immunity to be accorded to Ms Khobragade and facilitated her return to Delhi so as to stall the criminal case being pursued in New York. This is a far from satisfactory resolution to the Devyani case and the fact that India retaliated by asking the US to 'recall’ one of their Delhi-based diplomats of similar rank has only served to further vitiate the already strained bilateral relationship.

Hopefully this reciprocal expulsion of diplomats will bring closure – in the public domain – to what has been a series of unfortunate developments that began with the high-handed arrest of Ms Khobragade in New York on 12 December 2013 and the ‘strip-search’ she was subjected to. The outrage in India over the manner in which a diplomat had been treated was predictable and this was compounded when it was revealed that US authorities had also aided the family of the maid to fly out of India in a furtive manner. In the intervening period, US and Indian authorities - both at the political and bureaucratic level – have allowed the matter to be debated in full media glare and the net result alas, has been a hardening of respective positions.

The Khobragade case is multi-dimensional and hence complex and has more to it than what has become the dominant view both in India and the US. At a purely legal level, the manner in which the US investigative agencies indicted Ms Khobragade for allegedly cheating and exploiting her maid – Ms Sangeeta - ought to have been taken to its logical conclusion through the judicial process. But the complexity of the case lies in the first layer, wherein it has now been revealed that the maid in question was already being investigated by an Indian court and she had gone ‘missing’ – while in the US. Why the US authorities facilitated the hasty exit of the maid’s family without keeping the Indian side informed is part of the breakdown in the trust index between the two countries. For its part, the US stand is that they were responding to an infringement of local labour laws that had been brought to their notice – and that the law is applied uniformly. The fact that the US enforces its laws selectively when it comes to sensitive bilateral relationships is well-known and the ‘wink and a nod’ practice is part of diplomacy globally.

The government-to-government weapon contracts between the U.S. and India, with no competitive bidding or transparency, are deepening India’s import dependency without arming it with a decisive edge.

The blossoming of ties with the United States has become an important diplomatic asset for India in recent years. Yet, the heady glow of the much-ballyhooed strategic partnership helped obscure prickly issues that arose much before the Devyani Khobragade episode. In truth, the Obama administration’s reluctance to accommodate Indian interests on major issues, coupled with the fundamental challenge of managing an asymmetrical relationship, has created fault lines that are testing the resilience of the partnership.

One aspect of the relationship, however, has thrived spectacularly — U.S. arms sales to India. In just a few years, the U.S. has quietly emerged as India’s largest arms supplier, leaving Russia and Israel far behind. This development is linked to the Indo-U.S. civilian nuclear deal. Although it remains a dud deal on energy, with little prospect of delivering a single operational nuclear power plant for years to come, it has proved a roaring success in opening the door to major U.S. arms sales. The 2005 nuclear agreement-in-principle incorporated a specific commitment to ramp up defence transactions.

The booming arms sales — rising in barely one decade from a measly $100 million to billions of dollars yearly — have seemingly acquired an independent momentum. Nothing better illustrates this than the fact that, at the height of the Khobragade affair, India, far from seeking to impose any costs on America, awarded it yet another mega-contract — a $1.01-billion deal for supply of six additional C-130J military transport aircraft. When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited the White House last September, among the gifts he took for President Barack Obama was a commitment to purchase $5 billion worth of new arms.

Today, India’s largely one-sided defence relationship with the U.S. is beginning to look akin to its lopsided ties with Russia, with weapon sales serving as the driving force. However, unlike the torpid Indo-Russian non-military commerce, the two-way Indo-U.S. trade has quadrupled in just seven years from $25 billion in 2006 to about $100 billion in 2013.

Still, few Indians are raising the key questions: How are India’s security interests being advanced by substituting the corrosive import dependency on Russia with a new dependency on the U.S., without progress to build a domestic arms-production base? What makes the strategic partnership “special,” given that Washington also has special relationships with India’s regional adversaries — a security alliance since 2004 and strategic partnership since 2006 with Pakistan, and a “constructive strategic partnership” with China since 1997 that predates the strategic partnership with India? Is a relationship locking India as a leading U.S. arms client sustainable in the long run?

Mr Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom, the President of Maldives, visited India from January 1-4, 2014. His decision to visit India first, after his election in November 2013, is an indication that he wants to repair India-Maldives relations which had received a setback since President Nasheed was deposed in 2011.

Maldives has undergone considerable political turbulence in 2012-13. The presidential election held on September 7, 2013 was suspended. In the first round of election held on November 9, the former President Mohamed Nasheed of Maldivian Democratic Party had won about 47 per cent of votes leaving behind his nearest rival Abdulla Yameen at 30 per cent. However, in the second round of election, Abdulla Yameen, getting the support of other opposition parties, managed to get 51.39 per cent, compared to 48.61 percent for Ex-President Mohamed Nasheed. The turnaround in Yameen’s fortunes happened as all opponents of Nasheed joined hands to isolate and defeat him. It is interesting that Nasheed accepted his defeat graciously despite the narrow margin of his loss. Hopefully, this will help bring political stability in the country. Soon after his election the new President said that his priority was to stabilize rupiah and create jobs.

During 2012-13, India-Maldives relations suffered considerably. The Maldivian Government terminated the Indian company GMR contract of the Male airport on allegations of irregularity in awarding the project. The former President Nasheed had to take shelter in the Indian embassy in 2013 due to violent protests on the streets of Male. The bilateral relations touched a new low in 2013. It is in this context that Mr Yameen’s visit to India becomes important.

President Yameen’s Visit

During the visit, Mr Yameen was effusive in praising India. He said, “In every hour of national distress, be it a foreign terrorist coup attempt as with the 1988 mercenary attack or a natural catastrophe such as the 2004 Asian Tsunami, India helped us wholeheartedly and generously in restoring normalcy to the lives of our people." For India, Maldives’ location in the Indian Ocean and close to its southern tip makes it a strategically significant country. The report of increasing Chinese presence in the Maldives is a matter of anxiety for India. Mr Yameen’s visit was aimed at reassuring India that his country recognises India’s importance for Maldivian stability and would take India’s security concerns on board.

During the visit, Mr Yameen sought India’s help in putting the Maldivian economy on track. He specifically asked for India’s assistance in skill building and training of personnel.

Key Agreements to Boost Cooperation

Trade and Investment, Connectivity

The 1981 trade agreement between the two countries provides for export of essential commodities and bilateral trade has grown to Rs.700 crores (See Table-1 below). India imports scrap metals from Maldives while its exports include agriculture and poultry produce, sugar, fruits, vegetables, spices, rice, flour (atta), textiles, drugs and medicines, a variety of engineering and industrial products, sand and aggregate, cement for building, etc. In June 2011, India released three-year quota for export of essential commodities like Stone Aggregates, Rice, Wheat Flour, Sugar, Dal, Onion, Potato and Eggs from India to Maldives.

Army chief Gen Bikram Singh today said there should be no dilution of AFSPA in Jammu and Kashmir in view of the prevailing situation in the region, including possible terrorist spillover into the Valley after US drawdown in Afghanistan.

"We need to look at developments in Afghanistan in 2014 before we can look at perhaps tampering with or diluting the disturbed areas (act). This is in regard to the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in Jammu and Kashmir," he said here.

Gen Singh said it would be prudent to "wait and watch for a while" before taking a call on AFSPA.

"As per military's prespective, (in view of) the situation prevailing in the Valley, I think we should wait for a while to see whether the situation remains the same, worsens or improves. Based on that we should take action," the Army chief said.

In a word of caution, he said perhaps there may be a certain amount of spillover from Afghanistan into Jammu and Kashmir. "There are certain inputs alluding to this already. And, therefore, we need to be on guard," he said at a press conference on the eve of the Army Day on January 15.

Asked about the statement of Aam Aadmi Party leader Prashant Bhushan that AFSPA should be lifted from Jammu and Kashmir, Gen Singh said as a matter of principle, "I never comment on statements of political leaders....Our national prespective is that it is our country, Jammu and Kashmir is our state and nobody should have any doubts about it. We are implementing the national strategy and the army is playing its role as part of that."

Bhushan has batted for the lifting of AFSPA, saying it gave the army immunity in cases of human rights violation while causing alienation amongst the people. APP has dissociated itself from his remarks.

Last year on January 8, one Indian soldier was beheaded by Pakistan Army troops in a cross-border assault after which Gen Singh had said that the Indian Army reserves the right to retaliate at the time and place of its choice.

Elaborating on this statement, Gen Singh said he wanted to give the "freedom of action to local commanders to deal with the situation accordingly as they deemed appropriate."

Commenting on today's ceasefire violation, he said he has asked the Director General (Military Operations) Lt Gen Vinod Bhatia to look into the matter and talk to his Pakistani counterpart on the issue.

He said the particular violation in Poonch area today started after Indian troops detected movement of three terrorists trying to infiltrate into Indian side. "We will give them a befitting reply if infiltration is attempted."

The chief said this was first incident of ceasefire violation after October 27 when the DGMOs of the two countries talked to each other and it will be taken up with Pakistan side.

The interim nuclear agreement is a direct consequence of the dramatic change in the interaction and relationship between Iran and the US; it is now known that Oman mediated backstage contacts between Iran and the US for the past many months in Muscat. It simply could not have happened had both sides not been extremely keen to do it. Though the follow up first meeting of experts concluded prematurely, both sides issued very hopeful and encouraging statements and dates for another round have been set. Significantly, President Obama has made it publicly clear that he is against the imposition of fresh sanctions against Iran and could even veto any Congressional resolution calling for sanctions.

Though superficially it would appear farfetched that recent developments in Iran could have any bearing upon the regional security environment affecting Jammu and Kashmir, the reality is that there is a linkage; Afghanistan is the source of it. Potentially the most important strategic issue for India in 2014 will be the regional and security consequences of the withdrawal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan. Both India and Iran have a vital strategic interest in whatever happens in Afghanistan as it will have profound consequences for national security, internal and external of both the countries.

If Iran and the US do not work against each other or at cross purposes in Afghanistan, then the evolving regional security environment for India and for the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir in particular, is unlikely to be affected adversely by changes that could take place in Afghanistan in 2014.

With the fight for Fallujah, Al Qaeda has roared back to life in Iraq—a scenario that could easily repeat itself in Afghanistan and Pakistan if the U.S. isn’t careful.

Al-Qaeda has staged a remarkable comeback in Iraq in the last year. Former National Security Advisor Jim Jones has called it “al-Qaeda’s renaissance.” This year, most if not all American forces and those of our allies in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) will finally come home from Afghanistan. Will al-Qaeda have another renaissance in South Asia?

There was no al-Qaeda in Iraq before 9/11—the terror organization moved into Iraq only when Osama bin Laden saw George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were getting ready to invade Iraq in 2003. He set a trap. By 2006 Al-Qaeda in Iraq had plunged the country into civil war, pitting Shia against Sunni. Only the brave efforts of American Marines and GIs prevented the complete collapse of the state.

Now al-Qaeda has come back in Iraq, raising its black flag over territory once fought over so hard by Americans.

As al Qaeda-related forces take over cities in western Iraq, global news outlets discuss the implications of brewing unrest and a potential civil war.

Can the same tragedy be repeated in Afghanistan and Pakistan? The longest war in American history will largely end for Americans this year. It will not end for Afghans or Pakistanis. Pakistan will continue to be the principal supporter and patron of the Afghan Taliban, the enemy that we have been fighting for so long. Pakistan provides the Taliban with safe haven and sanctuary to train and recruit its fighters and protects its leaders, including Mullah Omar. The Pakistani intelligence service, ISI, helps train and fund the Taliban.

Al-Qaeda may well recover in months, not years, after we depart Afghanistan if the pressure on its base in Pakistan dwindles.

In October 2011, U.S. Marines in Afghanistan launched a massive operation, pushing northeast along treacherous Route 611 in Helmand province to tangle with insurgents in Kajaki, then one of the last districts in Helmand without a large presence of U.S. forces. The major goal at the time: Root out the Taliban in a series of firefights and connect the landmark hydroelectric facility in the region, the Kajaki Dam, with the rest of province. Doing so would allow at long last for the belated installation of a third turbine planned to jumpstart electricity for tens of thousands of people in the region.

More than two years later, what's left of the U.S. military and civilian presence in Afghanistan are trying, finally, to complete the project, which first began in 2002 and has cost an estimated $500 million. The U.S. Agency for International Development recently announced it will negotiate a sole-source contract for the installation of the dam's third and final hydroelectric turbine with Black and Veatch, the Kansas-based engineering company that has worked there for years. The project will likely cost about $75 million, according to a recent letter from John Sopko, the U.S. special inspector for Afghanistan. And it won't be completed until 2015, well after the last U.S. combat forces leave the country.

But the work to install the final turbine, said to be collecting dust at the dam since it was delivered in late 2008, will come at a tenuous time. The U.S. military no longer has control of the region, or the road they cleared in 2011 to make way for the supplies needed to complete the project. The U.S.-led military coalition has ceded control of security across most of the country to Afghan forces despite serious questions about their long-term viability.

It also will come as top U.S. officials remain at odds with Afghan Hamid Karzai, who continues to refuse to sign an agreement hammered out between the two nations that is supposed to set the conditions for long-term American involvement in Afghanistan. U.S. officials have said it must be signed within weeks in order for the United States to stay beyond 2014, but Karzai is unlikely to do so, according to a recent cable by U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham and obtained by the Washington Post.

On the first Sunday of 2014, Sunni Ittehad Council, a political party which represents the Barelvi Muslims of Pakistan and another political party Majlis-e-Wahadat Muslimeen (MWM), which represents the minority Shia population, got together in a convention in Islamabad and formed a patriot alliance. The two parties declared that they would jointly celebrate Milad-un-Nabi, the birthday of the Prophet, even at the cost of their lives, to show their reverence to the noble occasion. Many in the Pakistani media have projected it as coming together of Sunnis and Shias to celebrate an important festival. However, a careful analysis indicates that the Islamabad declaration by the two groups is nothing but an attempt by two beleaguered religious communities to forge a unity against the attacks, both physical and ideological emanating from aggressive radical Wahhabi and Deobandi seminaries. The two groups have pledged to fight anti-Islam and anti-Pakistan forces and have dubbed the Nawaz Sharif Government in Islamabad as the political face of the Taliban. This statement shows their discomfort with Taliban and the government’s acquiescence to its radical onslaught.

Barelvis constitute a clear majority amongst Sunni Muslims in the provinces of Punjab and Sindh. However, for quite some time they have been at the receiving end of relentless violence against their shrines and practices being launched from numerically smaller, but organisationally more cohesive Deobandi and Wahhabi militant groups. Not only have various Sufi shrines across Pakistan been attacked, but even their hereditary Pirs have been targeted. Similarly, the Milad-un-Nabi processions taken out by Barelvi Muslims have been fired at from Deobandi mosques, as both Deobandis and Wahhabis consider the celebrations as unIslamic. Before the festival, SMS texts were circulated telling people that it was Bida’ah (innovation) and hence forbidden to celebrate Milad. Consequently, Pakistan has been switching off mobile services in major towns during Milad-un-Nabi. In 2013, the cellular services remained suspended in most parts of Sindh and Baluchistan and in 28 districts of Punjab on Milad-un-Nabi. There were also two blasts in Karachi, which killed four and injured fifteen others on this auspicious day. Despite these provocations, Barelvis have not been able to challenge the radical Deobandi and Wahhabi organisation as they are divided and owe their loyalties to different Pirsand Gaddinashins (hereditary custodians of various Sufi shrines).

Similarly, Shias in Pakistan have been repeatedly targeted by Deobandi and Wahhabi sectarian outfits as well as Taliban. Consequently, in 2013 around 600 Shias were killed and around 1000 injured across Pakistan in sectarian attacks. Shia places of worship, Shia pilgrims and Shia eminent personalities have been the usual targets. Besides Shia processions like Chelhum and Ashura processions have been targeted. On 15 November 2013, Shia procession on 10th of Muharram was pelted with stones near a Deobandi mosque in the garrison city of Rawalpindi that resulted in large scale bloodshed and violence. Investigations have revealed that Deobandi youth were mobilised through social media to prevent the Ashura procession from passing through peacefully. Although mobile phone services had been suspended in 80 sensitive cities both on 9thand 10th of Muharram, the violence could not be prevented across Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). Many cities in Punjab and KP were placed under curfew and the garrison city of Rawalpindi, which houses Pakistan Army’s headquarters, remained under curfew for a week. Shias have tried to retaliate in places where they are strong, but their numerical weakness has prevented them from effectively countering the armed militants of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and Sipah-e-Sahiba Pakistan, which has metamorphosed itself as Ahl-e-Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ). More significantly the State has often provided tacit support to many of the anti-Shia outfits.

As Japan maintains its naval presence in the Indian Ocean and India bolsters its engagement in the western Pacific, Abe’s upcoming visit is an important step.

Summary

Shinzo Abe’s visit is a good time to operationalise the India-Japan maritime partnership.

Japanese Prime Minister Shizo Abe will be back in India later this month. He gave a magnificent speech at the Indian Parliament in August 2007 advocating the Japan-India strategic global partnership in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Abe envisioned the idea that Japan and India, as like-minded maritime democracies, should promote freedom and prosperity in the “broader Asia”, evolving the region into a network that would allow people, goods, capital and knowledge to flow freely.

Although his health did not allow Abe to pursue this vision himself, his successors promoted the strategic global partnership and expanded bilateral security and economic cooperation over the past six years. The recent visit of the emperor and empress of Japan to India endorsed and further strengthened bilateral ties. In particular, Japan and India have bolstered maritime security cooperation with occasional combined naval exercises. Japanese and Indian defence minsters have just agreed on a plan to export Japan’s highly capable frying boat US-2 to India, which will enhance India’s maritime capability.

Abe has returned to power in a world different from that seven years ago. The Indo-Pacific region is witnessing a power shift as a result of the “rise of the rest”. There is a growing concern over the sustainability of the US pivot towards Asia due to its fiscal constraints and indecisive domestic politics. China has surpassed Japan as the world’s second-largest economy and become more assertive, disrupting freedom in the global commons, while Japan was suffering from its decade-long stagnation and reducing its defence budget. Meanwhile, India has maintained rapid economic growth, although the pace is slowing, and invested more in the development of sea power.

The great maritime commons provide most benefits when regarded as an open and free highway, not a defensive barrier. Good order at sea that ensures legitimate use of the seas for navigation and resource exploitation is the foundation of regional security and prosperity. However, good order at sea is now being challenged in the “Long Littoral” along the Indo-Pacific region by persistent piracy, growing sea-denial capabilities and excessive maritime claims.

As news flashes go, Manmohan Singh's Jan. 3 announcement that he intends to "hand over the baton to a new prime minister" was hardly earth shattering. Given his unpopularity after nearly a decade in office -- Singh's favorability rating hovers at about 5 percent -- the 81-year-old already looked as likely to snag a third term as to win India a medal for skiing at the Sochi Olympics.

Nonetheless, his formal announcement -- at only his third press conference since he took office in 2004 -- sets the stage for an epic election showdown, most likely in April and May. Later this month, the ruling Congress Party is likely to name 43-year-old Rahul Gandhi, the fifth generation Nehru-Gandhi dynasty scion, as its candidate to replace Singh as prime minister. Gandhi's main rival, 63-year-old Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, has been crisscrossing the nation since the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) anointed him their candidate in September. Polls show Gandhi trailing the pro-business Hindu nationalist; in December, the BJP pulverized Congress in four important state elections. And some pundits also expect a strong showing by the year-old Aam Aadmi (Common Man) Party led by anticorruption activist Arvind Kejriwal.

Amid the battle to elect a new prime minister -- who will almost certainly be more charismatic and effective than the incumbent -- it sometimes seems as though Singh has already faded into retirement. But his lackluster record will frame the upcoming election.

On Jan. 3, Singh tried to put his best foot forward. He spoke of his government achieving the country's highest growth "for any nine-year period," delivering "a New Deal for rural India" by raising incomes, and pulling 138 million people out of poverty. He touted new legislation to check corruption, and older efforts to boost government transparency. For good measure, he warned that electing Modi -- on whose watch in 2002 Gujarat witnessed anti-Muslim riots that killed more than 1,000 people -- would prove "disastrous" for India. (Modi denies wrongdoing, and in December a lower court upheld a Supreme Court-ordered investigation that cleared him of complicity in the riots.)

Unfortunately for Singh, many people view his legacy in less charitable terms. The Oxford-educated economist inherited a nation filled with hope and leaves it filled with doubt and despair. He entered the prime minister's office as a widely-respected former finance minister, known for probity and quiet dignity, and will exit it as a byword for weakness and ineffectual governance.

The current trends make clear that tensions between China and Japan on political and strategic issues are increasing day by day. It is natural that Asia-Pacific nations, which have a big stake in guaranteeing regional stability and prosperity, are coming under compulsions to shape their responses to the developing situation. For that purpose, they are keeping a close watch on indicators of the future course of bilateral ties between the two Asian economic giants.

It goes without saying that China-Japan political relations remain frosty mainly due to the ownership dispute over islands, called Diaoyu by Beijing and Senkaku by Tokyo. It would be important not to ignore veteran leader Deng Xiaoping’s position that the territorial problem could be left to the future generations in the two countries for resolution. However, the issue came into the limelight China in mid-2009, a period that saw China enforcing a foreign policy course with a revised strategic focus. This gave priority to protecting what it calls its ‘core interests’ – Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan, strategic resources and trade routes. The result has been a new assertiveness based on the ‘sovereignty’ factor in China’s external behavior. With respect to the disputed islands, Beijing, from this period, began emphasising that China was not a party to the treaty on the island group, approved by the post-World War II allied powers’ treaties.

Two factors can be credited for the post-2009 accentuation in China’s stand on the disputed islands. The first concerns the resource factor - on the basis of increasingly available estimates, Beijing started to realise that the islands have high potential for energy deposits and that sovereignty over them would enable it to gain base lines for China’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), legitimising its exploitation of resources. The second factor is strategic, which forces China to become aggressive on the islands issue - the US position that the disputed islands are being governed by the 1960 US-Japan Security Treaty which allows Washington to intervene in the event of any external threat to the islands. Three steps taken of late by China in the East China Sea theatre need to be understood in a strategic context:

If there's a Chinese business person in your neighborhood talking about buying a local company or plot of land, you're not alone. Excluding bond purchases, Chinese investment in the US set a record last year at over $14 billion, rising more than 50% from 2012. Whether more is on the way is largely our choice.

The American Enterprise Institute - Heritage Foundation China Global Investment Tracker is the world's only fully public database on Chinese non-bond investment. It contains more than 500 outward investments of $100 million or more made by the People's Republic since 2005, worth over $475 billion (plus hundreds of engineering and construction contracts).

The American performance in 2013 pushed it past Australia as the PRC's leading target. Since 2005, the US has received about $60 billion in Chinese non-bond investment.

While Chinese purchases of US Treasury bonds are much more extensive, they are also abstract. The PRC doesn't just buy slips of American paper anymore. In 2013 alone, it bought a large food company (Smithfield), extensive and recognizable properties in Los Angeles and New York, and several billion dollars in shale production rights.

Is this a good thing? It certainly is for Americans selling some of their land or parts of their companies. To block people selling what they own - to interfere in free enterprise - there better be a good reason.

A knee-jerk reaction is "China is taking over." You might remember that in the 1980's, Japan was "taking over." It wasn't a real threat then, and it isn't now. Total US wealth - the monetary value of all the things we have - exceeds $75 trillion. Chinese investment is a drop in the bucket.

A more substantial argument is the PRC is not an ally and frequently not a friend. Because it's not an ally, some Chinese deals should be scrutinized closely by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). These are deals that could pose a risk to American security. When there isn't a genuine risk, CFIUS should quickly get out of the way.

Because China is frequently not a friend, we don't owe them anything. The American market should be open and transparent because it benefits Americans. If Beijing has complaints, these should be given the same weight accorded to American complaints about Chinese policies.

For example, the US rightly views Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOE)'s as heavily subsidized while the PRC believes the US discriminates against them. Beijing is half-right: outside the US, SOE's account for close to 95% of Chinese investment by value. In the US, they account for less than 70%. But until American firms are treated better in China, there is little reason for the US to welcome Chinese SOE's.

Looking ahead, the AEI-Heritage tracker demonstrates a clear pattern over time: Chinese firms have a herd mentality, and they get restless. They invest heavily in a region, say South America, for two years or so and then largely move on.

The US could break this rule. We have everything China doesn't have at home - resources, technology, and protection of property rights. And our market is large enough to absorb far more Chinese investment than any other country. With a critical exception for national security, we should be open to this possibility. Record Chinese investment in the US in 2013 was good for both countries.

Beijing’s unanticipated, unilateral announcement of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) on November 23 over maritime areas in the East China Sea further heightened tensions in what has already become an increasingly volatile situation. The new ADIZ not only encompasses the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyutai/Diaoyu island chain but also the submerged Iedo/Suyan Rock, a point of dispute between the People’s Republic of China and South Korea. It is particularly curious that Beijing would up the ante with Seoul, especially at a time when it was scoring points in South Korea over the lingering World War II history debate with Tokyo.

No one, of course, anticipates a military confrontation over a series of unoccupied rocks in the East China Sea. However, as U.S. Vice President Biden pointed out, during a speech at Seoul’s Yonsei University during his recent East Asian trip, "the possibility of miscalculation, of a mistake, is real. "Such was the case, almost one hundred years ago, when a motorcade took a wrong turn in the Balkan city of Sarajevo on June 24, 1914. The resulting assassination of the Austrian Archduke led to a worldwide conflagration. A similar mistake could upend the tranquility that has allowed East Asia to make such remarkable economic progress in the past three decades.

Taiwan has pointed the way for defusing those tensions that only last year triggered the most violent anti-Japanese demonstrations to be seen in mainland China in a number of years. A fishery agreement, signed by Taipei and Tokyo earlier this year after seventeen years of deadlocked negotiations, allows for an amiable distribution of marine products, including those from waters in the vicinity of the Senkaku/Diaoyutai/Diaoyu islands. By avoiding mention of the underlying sovereignty claims, the agreement provides a concrete example of how to proceed in a nonconfrontational manner. Taiwanese fishermen were seen as greatly benefiting from the agreement, with an additional 1,400 square nautical miles of waters being made available to them. Some eight hundred Taiwanese trawlers will now reportedly be able to peacefully catch more than 40,000 tons of fish in these waters each year.

This is not to imply that Taiwan has not taken an assertive stance regarding its air rights vis-a-vis Beijing's new ADIZ. Taiwan's Minister of Defense publicly pledged on December 2, with regard to the newly announced ADIZ, that the nation's military would "stand firm to defend the sovereignty of the Republic of China (ROC)."

A Reserve Bank of India panel has submitted a report on financial inclusion. It proposes that priority sector lending by banks be raised and that banks be mandated to open accounts for every adult Indian by January 2016. The recommendations do not challenge the RBI’s basic approach to financial inclusion. This approach, which has been to mandate banks to undertake financial inclusion, might have spread public sector bank branches in rural areas for some years, helped open bank accounts and directed credit, but it has stopped yielding results. What India needs is a new approach, which encourages competition and innovation, rather than more mandates.

India’s approach to financial inclusion has been bank-centric. So far, it has focused on bank nationalisation, continued with government ownership of banks and their recapitalisation. The way to ensure inclusion has been priority sector lending, which mandates that 40 per cent of each bank’s lending be to weaker sectors — small-scale industries, agriculture and exports — to which the bank might not have lent otherwise. The RBI panel now recommends raising this share to 50 per cent.

The panel’s recommendations are in sync with the RBI’s recent guidelines for the grant of licences to new banks. These require that the bank have a plan for financial inclusion and that it open 25 per cent of its branches in unbanked rural areas. This approach is similar to the one that required PSU banks to open rural branches. By once again mandating financial inclusion, this time for private sector licence applications, instead of focusing on competition and innovation, the RBI is essentially doing more of the same.

The explosion of fighting in Iraq’s Anbar province is creating consternation in U.S. foreign policy circles, as worries increase about the possibility of civil war and the final collapse of Washington’s once-fond hopes for a stable, democratic, pro-Western country. Recriminations are especially loud among the usual neoconservative suspects, including Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who argue that the Obama administration’s fecklessness has opened Iraq to an Al Qaeda offensive that could unravel all that Washington achieved, at great cost in blood and treasure, with and following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

But the fighting in Anbar does not simply constitute an Al Qaeda initiative. That explanation is as dangerously simplistic as the tendency of U.S. hawks during the initial years of the U.S. occupation of Iraq to attribute all armed resistance to “Saddam dead enders [3].” The roots of the latest conflict are far deeper and more complex than a case of Al Qaeda troublemaking; they reflect Iraq’s bitter ethno-religious divisions and weak national cohesion. Indeed, the new turmoil in Anbar is merely the most recent development that raises serious questions about whether Iraq is a viable country. Overall violence there during 2013 was the worst since 2008, most of it political or sectarian in nature.

The events that have taken place since the initial stunning victories by insurgents, who took control of most of Fallujah and portions of Ramadi, confirm the complexity of the power struggle in Iraq. Anbar, Iraq’s Sunni heartland, has seethed for years against the policies of prime minister Nouri al Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government. Nevertheless, some Sunni tribes have demanded that Al Qaeda forces withdraw from their positions, and some fighting has occurred between more moderate elements and the Islamic militants.

It is even an oversimplification to attribute the latest struggle in Iraq solely to Sunni-Shiite sectarian animosity. Long-standing religious differences are indeed a major factor, as they are next door in Syria, Bahrain, and other areas of the Middle East. But as in those other countries, the ancient Sunni-Shiite religious feud is not the only relevant source of Iraq’s violence. Sunni anger at the Maliki government is also fueled by a generalized resentment of their group’s loss of power and perks. During the British colonial period, Sunnis dominated the ruling elite in Iraq, even though they constituted barely 20 percent of the population, and their domination continued after Iraq became independent. The majority Shiites, as well as the Kurds, were decidedly second-class citizens. The rise of the ruling Ba’ath Party, especially once Saddam became the supreme leader, increased the Sunni stranglehold in both the political and economic arenas.

The U.S. invasion and occupation upended that social order, elevating the Shiites and their Kurdish allies to pre-eminence. A generous policy by the new ruling elite, with the goal of national reconciliation, might have placated the displaced Sunnis, but the Maliki government has been anything but generous. The regime rivals its Ba’ath predecessor in terms of corruption, and its increasingly repressive policies are largely directed against Sunni critics and political opponents. That conduct has fed the resentment in Anbar and other areas, and what is emerging now appears to be a full-blown insurgency aimed at either restoring Sunni dominance on a national level, or more likely, achieving extensive autonomy (perhaps even independence) for the majority Sunni portion of Iraq.

To recall Putin, there is not only no calm and no democracy, but no state authority left in the Islamic ‘badlands’ that the West set out to tame with its military and then reinvent as liberal democratic showpiece items

To recall Putin, there is not only no calm and no democracy, but no state authority left in the Islamic ‘badlands’ that the West set out to tame with its military and then reinvent as liberal democratic showpiece items

A catastrophic four-way war involving the Shia-dominated Iraqi Army, Sunni tribesmen loyal to the Iraqi government, antigovernment jihadis under the umbrella of Al Qaeda, and anti-government Sunni sheikhs is raging in Iraq’s Anbar province. Anbar’s shared border with Syria, where a foreign-fuelled Sunni jihad is challenging the Shia dictatorship of President Bashar al Assad, has added to the province’s woes and shattered it again after American military forces waged deadly counterinsurgency there a decade ago.

The cross-border spillover of jihadi machines like the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is so total that Iraq and Syria are separate nation-states only in name. They are part of one uninterrupted war theatre which raises wrenching questions about the wisdom of Western military interventions.

The sectarian hatred driving the civil war-like situation prevailing in Iraq can be traced back to decades of abusive tyranny of the Sunni megalomaniac, Saddam Hussein. It was reignited by the partisan and exclusionary policies of the current Shia Prime Minister, Nuri al Maliki. But in the interregnum between Saddam and Maliki (slammed by critics as a “Shia Saddam”) came the most crucial phase of Iraqi history when the Sunni-Shia discord got militarised.

This was the period of US occupation from 2003 to 2011. Shocking violence leading to deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians in the name of sect occurred under American military’s watch in 2006-’07. The wholesale slaughter during those two years by Sunni and Shia death squads and suicide bombers happened in the context of an armed resistance movement against the American military’s occupation of Iraq.

American weapons and funds which went into splitting the Iraqi Sunni ranks and carving out a so-called “Awakening Movement” to oppose Al Qaeda in Anbar left Sunni tribes armed to the teeth and seething against the central government in Baghdad. Far from refashioning Iraq into a democratic role model for the rest of West Asia, the American occupiers stoked a devastating Sunni-Shia tussle that is burning with renewed vehemence in both Iraq and Syria.

Now that the US military has packed its bags and left Iraq to writhe in bloodshed, one would have wished for more soul-searching in America about the disastrous outcomes of the wars unleashed by President George W. Bush. Instead, hawks from the Republican Party, like John McCain, are insisting that the US Army should have permanently hunkered down in Iraq.